Whiteland football shuts out Greenwood

Whiteland coach Darrin Fisher has long placed a premium on playing your best football in the month of October. 

He had plenty to be happy about on Friday night.

Jake Perry rushed for 166 yards and three touchdowns in just one half of action and Trevor Larence added two interceptions and a special-teams score as the Warriors steamrolled Greenwood, 40-0 in its regular-season finale.

The sixth-ranked Warriors (7-2) will host Franklin in the first round of 5A sectional action next week. The Woodmen (2-7) will be at New Castle for a 4A showdown.

[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery

"Pretty much everything we did today was going good for us," Larence said. "Our offense kept pounding on them, and our defense kept shutting them out."

Greenwood moved into Whiteland territory on its opening drive, but Larence cut the Woodmen off with his fifth pickoff of the season. On the very next snap, Perry took a handoff and rumbled 59 yards to give the Warriors a quick 6-0 lead.

Perry scored again on a 13-yard run and added a two-point conversion to stretch the lead to 14 with 5.3 seconds remaining in the first quarter. He ran for 120 yards in the opening period.

The night quickly went from bad to worse for the Woodmen, as they ended consecutive possessions with errant snaps on punts. The first was recovered in the end zone by Larence for a touchdown, and the next resulted in a safety just 90 seconds later.

Perry scored his third touchdown on a 9-yard run, and after a Dakota DeBaun interception, Gavin Lutz tacked on a 15-yard scoring run to send the Warriors into the locker room with a 37-0 cushion.

"I thought we had to start fast," Fisher said. "We talked all week long about coming out and playing your best football you’ve played all year long in the first quarter. And I thought the first half couldn’t have went any better."

Whiteland ate up more than eight and a half minutes of clock with its first possession of the second half before a Dalton Spangler stretched the margin to 40. After another Larence interception, the Warriors put all of their starters on the bench for the rest of the night.

While the Warriors head into the postseason on a high, the Woodmen will try to shake this defeat off quickly.

"We’re going to move on to New Castle," Greenwood coach Mike Campbell said. "We’re going to put this one behind us. Coach Fisher and his staff, they were ready to play, and … they put it on us tonight.

"We’ve got to get back into our playoff mindset and flush this one away quickly."